


Torn

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 09:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21251327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: An expansion of a lore snippet from the Black Legion Codex Supplement, where a squad of Flesh Eaters board the titular Soul of Damnation and discover an ancient stasis chamber containing a Luna Wolf Space Marine.





	Torn

_Soul of Damnation_. That was as good a name as any.

Space Hulks often earned themselves such designators, their crude amalgam of voidships, deep-space stations and other Warp-tossed detritus swiftly becoming the lair of twisted creatures and daemonspawn. Every effort was taken to avoid contact with the vast, drifting wrecks when they appeared in realspace, and it was not unusual to see Imperial Navy pickets keeping a cordon about them when they fell through populated Imperial systems.

Even when their occupants were unable or unwilling to reave out, a Space Hulk was an eternal temptation to those seeking treasure and glory within the wretched mass. Endless were the tales of the horror and death foolish smugglers and scavengers had met within.

Yet the Flesh Tearers had found no foe to fight in the hours they had walked the warping ways within the _Soul of Damnation_. No spoor of beast or man, nor the tell-tale thinning of the ethereal veil that would mark the presence of Chaos. They had deployed no stealth in their advance - not that their bulky Terminator armour allowed for such strategy - striding forth with shoulder-mounted floodlights, crackling power weapons and righteous zeal.

They had expected to be immediately met with resistance. Indeed, they had relied upon it, to gauge the strength, number and form of what they would face within.

From their landing in the breached hanger of a newly-taken voidship on the pocked skin of the Space Hulk, through a dozen separate installations and vessels not all of Imperial manufacture, they had seen nothing, heard nothing, but stillness and silence. Not even the corruption of the Warp seemed to have taken root within the tangle: all remained as it had been in life, or at least, at the moment of death.

Briefly, the Flesh Tearers doubled back, hoping to find their way closed by ambushes or changed geography. There was nothing but their own fresh bootprints in centuries of dust.

A halt was called within a grand hall of alien architecture, fluted columns and spirals dominating the floor-space and rising up beyond even the enhanced sight of a Space Marine. Each was wrought from bleached bone, inhumanly long and thin, interlocked like the mechanism of a puzzle-box.

‘This is pointless,’ growled the squad’s leader, Sergeant Kethri, the tusks of his Terminator plate hung with honour-pennants. ‘The weaklings of Scelus beg our protection from an empty husk. We shall return and make our displeasure known to the Governor. Directly.’

Assent murmured over the squad vox. The warriors honoured with Terminator plate within the Flesh Tearers were those who had proven themselves a thousand times on the field of battle; they lived for little else. They were called upon for the most bloody of engagements, the most daring of assaults. They deployed only when the risks were extreme. To have undertaken a minor scouting duty was akin to a mortal insult.

Unlike other Chapters of the Space Marines, the Flesh Tearers did not avenge insults with cold worlds and threats. They came in blood and fire and madness. A segmentum away, a thousand years prior, the Chapter had rendered a system lifeless for such a slight.

In some matters, the memory of Imperials was far too short. Perhaps a reminder was in order. Kethri felt his angel’s teeth prick, hunger-sharp, at the thought.

‘There is nothing here of value,’ agreed Eshan, the sergeant’s second, already turning his bulky armour towards the long egress. ‘No battle, no relics, no honour.’

One voice spoke out against them. The newcomer, still earning his place. Still on the outer. Still yet to prove himself to his blooded kin. ‘A moment, brothers. I have a power reading.’

Kethri grunted in annoyance. ‘A forgotten xenos device is not worthy of our attention, Kazmir.’

‘It matches Imperial energy patterns. A machine spirit in distress, beyond this alien hall. Something hidden deeper in the Hulk, obscured by the frequencies that surround it, like an abscess.’

The Sergeant’s helm lifted fractionally. To have caught such a minor reading amidst the mixed background noise that flooded the _Soul of Damnation_ was a praiseworthy feat and one that demanded an immediate response. It was precisely what the Flesh Tearers had sought to find aboard the Space Hulk. And, at very least, it would salve the annoyance they felt at having nothing to kill.

Not that Kethri would admit any of that to his new charge. The upjumped shit.

‘How far?’

‘No more than a few hundred meters. There is likely a breach directly to the source in this hall.’

Kethri blink-clicked the data Kazmir had shared across the squad net. He dimmed runes so that only Eshan, Kazmir and himself were selected -- the space would likely be small, and if it were a trap... Throne, if only! Something to break the tedium! -- it would be best to have the remainder of the squad ready to secure the spire chamber and ready to counter-attack.

The trio lumbered towards the signal’s source, floodlights playing over walls that were blackened with ash. A great fire had gutted the alien vessel at the moment of its demise, leaving the former inhabitants as nothing but specks of DNA layered across the hull’s insides.

An ingress stood out as stark as an open wound, hard white against the flaking material that surrounded it - a spar of plasteel that had pierced the hall’s belly, ground through by the eternal shifting and quaking of the Space Hulk as the innermost vessels were crushed by the additional layers.

Kethri shouldered aside newly-uncovered debris, Terminator plate proof against the lashing of live cables and jagged metal as he moved through the wreckage into a stark chamber beyond. Whatever had powered this section of voidship or station had only recently gone offline: the red emergency lighting strips were at full power, washing everything in a hue of dark crimson. Again, the angel’s teeth prickled insistently at the Sergeant’s lip. A reminder of how long he had been away from a true battlefield, gauntlets caked in gore, tearing apart the enemies of man--

A broad-chested figure loomed ahead. A giant silhouette. Kethri acted without conscious thought, centuries of war having honed his superhuman reflexes to the speed of instinct itself -- he brought up his autocannon and fired towards a hostile target.

An enemy, an enemy, an enemy in the wretched plate of the Traitors! The cursed! The damned! He spat fury along with mass-reactive at his target, howls of vox-enhanced rage as he closed in.

‘Sergeant!’

Eshan’s voice cut through the battle-haze a second before Kethri could drive a fist into his opponent’s gorget.

Where it would have been as ineffective as his autocannon rounds had been, judging by the pristine covering of the stasis coffin before him. The Sergeant checked himself, the trembling of transhuman muscles and the slow trickle of blood inside his helm from where the angel’s teeth had gouged his flesh as they fully extended. He unclenched his fist and, instead of smashing it fruitlessly against the impenetrable casket, laid his hand upon the venerable machine.

It was wise not to compound an offence against a machine spirit, particularly one that held a prize.

The shape Kethri had mistaken for a traitorous Astartes was, indeed, of their lineage, armoured in a mark of plate that had been mass-produced in that glorious age of Imperial dreams: the Great Crusade. It had been envisaged as the ultimate battlesuit for the Emperor’s mailed fist, his Legiones Astartes, the very apex of technological development -- but ten thousand years had passed since, and the modern Space Marine would consider it woefully obsolete. The markings the warrior bore were likewise as ancient -- and indecipherable, their meaning lost to ignorance and betrayal.

Clad in bone-white armour trimmed in midnight black, the Space Marine stood with helmet under one arm. His long hair was bound up in a warrior’s knot and a wry smile was frozen on his coarse features, as though lost in a memory of better times when the stasis coffin was activated.

On one pauldron, a dark wolf devoured a halved, pale moon.

‘This cell is ancient,’ confirmed Kazmir, breaking the Sergeant’s moment of connection with the frozen warrior. ‘Materials are Crusade-composition. I have no records of the Chapter markings, however. That is unusual.’

It was. Terminator armour was venerable, the machine spirit loaded with libraries of knowledge on Space Marine heraldry that spanned thousands of years and various loyalties. The suits were far older than the Astartes who wore them; the knowledge of their spirits older even still. And yet their wisdom was muted before this being. That spoke of either an age even older than suspected, in the murky time of Unification, or a deliberate removal.

Kethri had already made a decision.

‘We will speak to him.’ The Sergeant moved to the casket’s interface, haptic controls engaging to allow the mighty fist a greater degree of manual dexterity. ‘There will be no secrets.’

‘And if he is a traitor of old?’

Eshan chuckled. ‘It would take a truly peerless warrior to emerge from stasis and slay three Terminators. A worthy death, I say - let him free.’

‘Sergeant, some things are better left alone.’

‘No,’ Kethri replied, but his voice was kinder than it had been. ‘I understand that you endured much on the deployment that saw you elevated to our ranks, Kazmir. Knowledge that darkens your heart. If the warrior proves false, I will slay him before an untrue word leaves his lips.’

The newcomer’s tusked helm inclined in respect. ‘My thanks.’

With a warning whine, the casket hummed, energy routing from standby to activation. The fields unwove, one by one, their interlocking energies gentling out of existence. Slowly, the warrior’s eyes blinked, then faster, as he was eased back into the temporal flow. A gauntlet clenched then unclenched, testing limbic responses. A turn of the head to take in the hulking Terminators that surrounded him - and the wreckage of the chamber, and the absence of the serfs and tech-adepts that would have normally attended an awakening.

‘Lupercal’s balls,’ he said, accent as crude as his grizzled features. The sea-blue of his eyes crinkled in a mirth that, by the lines, was common to him. ‘Rescued by angels. That’ll be a story the censors will have to put a line through.’

Silence. The mirth faded, replaced by consideration.

‘I don’t recognise that badge, cousins. Did we stray into something Sanguinius wanted us kept out of?’

There was no mistaking the shock, even in the featurelessness of Terminator plate. The minute lift of helms, the shifting of stances - the warrior in pale plate took it in at once, and stepped out of the casket, hand up to placate them.

‘We were headed towards Seventy-Eight-Twelve-’

‘Sanguinius,’ Kethri cut him off. ‘Tell us what you know.’

‘Last I saw him was on Murder, fighting side-by-side with Horus.’ The grin was back on the warrior’s face, ignorant of the renewed shock of his listeners. ‘Now there was a campaign if there ever was one! Your lord, if you don’t mind me saying, is a sight I’ll never forget. It’s the wings, him coming down like the Emperor’s wrath on those xenos, smiting down whole warrior-sects at a time. Lupercal’s fierce, aye, we’re underworld warriors every one in the Sixteenth, fierce and hard, but Sanguinius… I see him on the field, makes me feel half an oaf.’

‘Horus.’ The name was strangled, flattened by Kethri’s vox. ‘The Arch-Traitor.’

In a moment, the smiling warrior had gone for the power sword at his side. He was whip-fast, the helm tumbling away as he pressed down on the activation rune and a red disintegration field hissed into being around a blade carved with unknown symbols.

If the warrior was at all perturbed by the rolling-up of assault cannons and the similar activation of power fists that would see him smeared across the chamber, he gave no sign.

‘Must’ve misheard you, cousin,’ he spat, the deck below sizzling, shifting his weight into a striking stance. ‘Any more clever jibes and I’ll feed them to you.’

Kethri had heard enough. He brought his cannon up. The warrior tensed.

And the newcomer was between them, arms out to ward off each.

‘Let him speak.’

‘No!’ Kethri replied, finger twitching on the cannon’s trigger. ‘The son of the Arch Traitor stands before us! Slayer of our father! I will not hear his lies!’

‘Lies?!’ the warrior cried from behind Kazmir’s bulk, ‘As if the idea that Horus would turn a hand against Sanguinius is anything but treason! No two of the Primarchs were closer than Lupercal and the Angel! I…’

The words faded. The newcomer’s machine spirit had finally interfaced with the technology of ten thousand years past. There was no need for the warrior to don his helm to become aware of corrected chronology - he could feel it in his plate, in the shocking spasms of his armour’s own recalibrations. ‘What is this?’

‘The truth.’

‘This is impossible. We drifted for… no, this can’t be right.’

‘It is. Warp fluctuations may have been involved, but I believe you have lain within the _Soul of Damnation_ for several thousand years.’

‘And… the Angel?’

‘He died at his brother’s hand, defending the Emperor. We are little welcome on Baal, yet there are some among us who have seen Sanguinius’ body in funerary state, there on the homeworld.’

‘That cannot be.’ The warrior shook his head. The sword wavered minutely - not in the breaking of will, but the suppression of anger. ‘He cannot have. Even if, if madness overtook Horus, the others would not have allowed it. He was one against seventeen. It would not have been permitted.’

‘Others rose with him. It is an old tale, and a long one…’

Kazmir recounted it in full, in that place between his Sergeant and an ancient nemesis, between the future and passed. He spoke of all he had learned as an Initiate and all he had learned afterwards: truths within truths. How Horus had been corrupted by the forces of Chaos, had spread that evil to nine of his brothers. How they had each succumbed in their turn, had transformed into foul creatures of the Warp themselves, how they had born their hate and jealousy to the Throneworld itself -- and what terrible price had been paid to throw them back at last.

It left the newcomer strangely drained, though he had done nothing but speak. He felt enervated, as though strength had been drawn from him in the telling - that even the story of the Heresy was dangerous.

There was only grief to be found when brother turned upon brother.

And at tale’s end, the warrior shook with grief, with fury. His eyes blazed with a wave of anger that even the veteran Sergeant had seen only in those sinking into the Black Rage, that psychotic trance which forced those of the Blood to relive Horus’ betrayal over and over as though they were in the place of their gene-sire.

All three of the Flesh Tearers knew that all-consuming, soul-blistering fury. They felt it in their marrow whenever they took the field, the seething, the boiling of blood.

It was kinship, of a sort.

It was kinship that made them step aside from the warrior. There was no farewell. No further questions. They had simply answered one of the warrior’s own:

‘Abaddon?’ he had asked, quietly. ‘What of the First Captain?’

They had told him.

They provided him a route to the hanger where their Thunderhawk had been docked.

Kethri had voxed the squad a simple instruction: do not interfere.

In a few hours, they would, themselves, return to the hanger, to find it empty. They had hailed their parent ship, the Strike Cruiser _Redeemer_, for new transport. There had been no questions about the previous ship, nor why it had taken flight for the nearest of Scelus’ core worlds. Soon enough the Flesh Tearers would follow it down, to keep a meeting with the Planetary Governor who had asked for their aid.

In the slaughter that followed, the Thunderhawk would be forgotten. The _Soul of Damnation_ would pass from the system, as would the vengeful Chapter, much to Scelus’ relief.

Kethri was slain on the moon of Ultima Gaal, his autocannon empty, his hands buried in the guts of the Warboss that killed him.

It was a worthy death.

Eshan rose to the rank of Sergeant himself, coming out from the shadow of his mentor. His fall was long and dark, and his embrace of the Rage total. He terrified even the keepers of the Death Company such was his madness: he would rant and rave as no other, as though he knew something terrible of the Arch Traitor, some personal secret. His killer was nameless, for the Tyranids know no distinction, but his last stand was legendary: a red, screaming shape that held a vital point on Stronghold Cetus for several hours, allowing the garrison to fully evacuate and redeploy in an action that would save the planet.

It was a worthy death.

There is a monastery where they keep Ancient Kazmir. He tells stories when he is lucid, the great gears of his sarcophagus grinding as he recounts the glorious campaigns he was honoured to be part of. Flesh Tearers of many stripes come to learn from him, his harnessing of the Gifts, though the Chapter Masters have not always approved. When warbands of berserkers fell upon the monastery, driven on by their endless search for blood and skulls, Kazmir rose from his sepulchre and stalked the gore-slick halls, slaying their champions, before expiring - at last - in the chapel.

It was a worthy death.

As for the Wolf, well.

He keeps his secrets.


End file.
